A Different Kind of Horror
by Mystic Piss
Summary: A surprise blackout at Caspar High puts Sam in a peculiar situation when she's almost late for school; And of course, Tucker's just gotta make it worse.


Okay okay, I know I should be working on Phantom Gravity; but I had to write this okay? It was a spur of the moment thing and I will hop onto working on the next chapter of Phantom Gravity later.  
This is what happens when I think too much about things and end up inspired (not that PG is any different). They start out as simple questions and end up this huge production.  
PS thanks Ray for completely SIDETRACKING ME FROM LIKE 10 OTHER PROJECTS TO WRITE THIS GVHBN

Oneshot; no PP; and just for the record, I see Star as a pretty intelligent character who gets overshadowed by her friend's less than stellar intelligence levels. I have no idea where I came up with that headcanon, but I like it.

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A Different Kind of Horror

The day started like any other day. Nothing was special.

She slept in a little later, ignoring her blaring alarm clock, which at some point she had thrown across the room in her sleep and was almost late for school because of it. It happened once in a while, but it was expected of a Monday. Danny was late again, thanks to Valerie, and detained further in the hall by Dash's usual heckling. He gave up on trying to stuff Danny in his locker last month, when he'd had his growth spurt. He'd almost given up on bothering Danny completely, except for the rumors floating around from an unknown source that Dash had gone soft, and he couldn't leave Danny alone after that, worried his reputation would take a hit.

Lancer was uninteresting, as usual; things were running smoothly, as usual; the day was going to be boring, as usual. The worst part of it being that it was only first period.

Sam sighed as she watched the clock, she was abnormally restless today. There wasn't a single reason that could be blamed on its own for the restlessness, too much was happening lately.

She had some relatives she didn't quite fancy coming tonight and her parents were taking the time to go through her room today, to prepare for the visit and, of course, they made sure she wasn't present; which couldn't result in anything good. Another set of relatives were coming Wednesday, which, though she liked these relatives, collided with her previous plans on the same night. Her, Danny, and Tucker had been invited to a ghostly ball, that fortunately and unfortunately meant formal wear. Fortunately because Dora's tailors had exquisite taste, able to make anything look fantastic if they knew your personality. Unfortunately, because while they did good work, she hated the time it took to be fitted and it was another thing to add to the exhausting schedule that'd suddenly popped up. Though, it was a much better alternative to staying home.

But it wasn't all bad, she had a movie date with the boys Tuesday after school, quickly followed by a personal date with Danny later that evening; which she was looking forward to.

She was just praying to, any deity by this point, to not have her relatives decide to stay more than one day. A few hours were enough, if they wanted to stay the week she wouldn't last. That and these two sets of relatives didn't get along too well, if they were in the same place for too long, just like her and her parents, a war would break out.

The second hand ticked uselessly away, shadowing the numbers slowly, one by one, before going back one tick as the lights flickered; momentarily delaying its preset path. At once, the room lit up in a wave of whispers and speculation as to what was going on.

"Ya think it's a ghost?" Someone asked. She saw Danny roll his eyes from the corner of hers and smirked. He would be the first to know of course.

"No, stupid. Why would a ghost attack the lights?" Another retorted.

"Well it wouldn't have to attack the lights, actually it could just mess with any number of-" He was cut off.

"Oh I hope it's the ghost boy." It was Sam's turn to roll her eyes. They all knew who that came from. Three years and she still didn't call him by his name. Who else but the class ditz?

The lights flickered again, which was strange since the generator should've picked up by now. Sam looked to her right, locking eyes with Danny. He saw the question and shook his head. A ghost wasn't the culprit, at least not within a certain range. With no luck from the ghost expert, she turned to her left, looking at Tucker the same way. He caught the hint and did a quick search for who knows what on his PDA, before scribbling something down and passing it to her.

::-Theres a flash flood warning in effect right now -::

She nodded in understanding, flipping the note over as the arrow instructed.

::-ALSO what're we seeing Tuesday?-::

She scribbled the title of the movie down on another sheet, before passing the note along to Danny and handing the movie title note to Tucker. She heard a quiet 'Yesss' hissed from her left and she smiled. Remembering how the boys had wanted to see two different horror movies released on the same weekend, she decided they'd all go to see Tucker's together and she'd go with Danny to see the other later on that night. It was a good compromise, she thought.

After the third time the lights flickered, they stayed off for a few seconds before coming on, accompanied by thunder this time, causing the anxious teens to talk louder in an attempt to block out the thunder that was sure to strike again; prompting the teacher to take charge.

"One Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, people! Settle down! You act as though you've never seen a storm before."

"But, like, what if the lights go out, what do we do?" Star asked. It was a good question. What would they end up doing if the lights went out? It had never happened in a class before.

Over the years it was revealed that Star wasn't as daft as she'd let on. Sure, her orbit around Paulina had left a bit to assumption, but she actually turned out to be an A student on her own. She just lacked in the common sense area every once in a while.

"Don't tell me you're afraid of the dark." Paulina scoffed. Now there was a girl who lacked common sense every day. She never read into the actual meaning of things, preferring to stick to the most judgmental assumption she could find. As hard as it was to believe, she'd actually gotten dumber over the years.

"Well, no, but like, he can't teach in the dark, can he?"

"_If_ the lights go out." Lancer began, feeling this was a situation he needed to interrupt now or lose control for the rest of the period. "Then we can tell stories. Like they used to in the olden days. Describe our weekend or something." He said, falling back on the age old task teachers used when they didn't have anything proper planned to waste time.

At first the class seemed excited, but describing their weekend? No one really wanted to do that. Though, the faster they got through that, the faster they could move onto a topic of real interest.

_If_ the lights went out, that is.

A loud boom echoed in the distance, making the class jump as rain now pounded on the glass windows, successfully ending all previous conversation and paving way for a great idea that would make their weekends seem all the more interesting, and hilarious if they had a good one.

"Why don't we put a little twist on those weekend stories?" Sam suggested, breaking the silence and drawing all attention to her. "Try and make the events of your weekend as horrifying as possible." At that moment lightning struck and the lights flickered again, making everything seem all the more creepy. "It _is_ October after all, and this_ is_ an English class. Let's spice it up a bit."

The class was silent until Paulina spoke up. "No way, who would go for that? My weekend wasn't horrifying at all." She said smugly.

"Well that's the challenge." Sam continued, purposefully making it sound like it was painfully obvious to anybody but the latina. "Even if your weekend was the least horrific thing in the world, you still have to tell it as if it was horrible and you barely escaped with your life."

After letting that sink in for a few minutes in the silence, Mr. Lancer finally spoke up. "The Hound of the Baskervilles! That's a fantastic idea." He paused for a moment. "It encourages creativity, and proper sentence structure rather than just a retelling a simple mundane task you do every weekend. If we don't get to that today, I might assign it in the future."

The class groaned at the idea of _more_ work, even if it was a great idea and probably the most interesting assignment they'd ever get from this class.

Luckily for them, a large flash was seen from outside and a loud high pitched buzz ran through the building as the lights went out for the last time, rendering everything dark. The sky had been transformed from a simple cloudy morning to a dark blistering mess as the period went on, only getting darker with the addition of the pouring rain.

Some of the kids in class cheered that they wouldn't have to learn any more about the importance of metaphors in classic literature, while others groaned at the fact that they could potentially be stuck in this class all day, now that the clock was off and the bells wouldn't sound.

Sam just grinned, excited about the change in the usually boring day, and glad that they'd decided to make their weekends freakier than fun. This was the kind of class assignment that made English a fun subject.

She was broken out of her thoughts of how to make her weekend the most horrifying in the class, when Danny tried to grab her attention.

"Sam." He said urgently, she looked to him to see what he wanted, but her attention was immediately drawn back to the front of the class when a drawer slammed, and their teacher held up a now lit flashlight.

"Everyone, put your desks in a circle with one in the middle, if you need light, let me know." Mr. Lancer announced, creating a very noisy atmosphere that successfully drowned out whatever Danny had to say.

Once the desks were arranged, the chattering picked up again, and Danny tried to get her attention again, only to get cut off by Lancer's "Quiet!" He proceeded to explain that they'd start with Paulina, then head on to Star, then Valerie and around the circle, ending with Dash, AKA around the circle counter-clockwise from the front of the room.

"Go ahead, Ms. Sanchez, try and make your weekend terrifying." Mr. Lancer spoke as sat back in his desk; having just set the flashlight on the middle desk and covered it with a piece of thin fabric and a fishbowl to create a dim light that lit up the room.

"Well, like. On Saturday I went to the mall, and I broke a nail. It was horrible! I had to go get a manicure and…" She gasped. "It cost twenty cents more than usual!" She clearly didn't understand the assignment.

While Paulina continued to recount the bad points of her weekend rather than doing it properly, Sam's phone buzzed in her pocket. A text from Danny.

She quickly checked it under the table.

::Did you brush your teeth today?::

It read.

::I didn't get a chance to. Why?::

She sent back. She saw him quietly typing away beside her when Lancer interrupted.

"Mr. Fenton, please put your phone away." And that was the end of that. Whatever he had to say had to wait.

She briefly wondered if there was something stuck in her teeth, and ran her tongue across them. She couldn't find anything and decided to ignore it since there wasn't anything she could do right now if there was. It's not like you were allowed out of the classroom when the halls were pitch black.

Paulina picked up her story again, promptly taking the distraction as a chance to end it with, "And that was my horrifying weekend."

Everyone was slow to begin clapping. So far they hated this, and why was that? Because a certain someone didn't even do it properly, thus making a boring assignment more boring.

It was Star's turn now. "Like, okay. My Friday began like any other Friday. Went to school, got out, hung out with Paulina. It started out great, until we got caught up in a ghost fight. The Red ghost hunter appeared out of the blue and hit the ghost boy square in the back after just capturing some other ghost." It was clear she was at least trying make it sound horrifying, and the fact it probably was made it more genuine, but she obviously hadn't seen many horror movies because her delivery sucked. What would've made it better was seeing the same story through different eyes, but with Paulina naming only the bad things over the weekend and her considering a fight that involved Danny a good thing, it was completely skipped over. "He like, hit the building hard and fell onto the pavement. We ran for cover, only to nearly get hit by some bricks that fell from the building and getting covered with dust and small pieces of cement."

Valerie's eyes hardened at that; clearly blaming them almost getting hurt on Danny, even though she'd been the one to initiate the fight and cause wanton destruction.

"A larger chunk of the building fell out of it before we could react. I was so scared. And like, it inched closer and closer and I could only watch in fear as a chunk of cement was about to crush us. I shut my eyes tight and ducked, feeling myself get hit by something and freezing until-" She paused for drama, she had picked up speed in her story-telling to add panic in the same way she must've felt during the incident. "Until I realized that Inviso-bill had phased us into the building and out of the way moments before our lives ended."

It was amazing, the girl understood the assignment, but still called Danny Inviso-bill. Sam wondered if Star knew Danny's actual name and hadn't used it because of Paulina, or if she truly didn't know despite all the public service announcements and him trying to fix the name problem every time he wound up on screen.

She waited a moment before continuing. "Thanks to Danny Phantom our lives didn't end on Friday and we were able to make it here to tell you this horrific tale." Well that answered that question. It was just for suspense.

"But some say the red hunter still lurks, looking for wayward ghosts and civilians to endanger."

This caused Valerie's eyes to widen and Sam to grin triumphantly. That's right, Val. Danny protects more people from you than you do from him.

The class clapped more eagerly this time, before turning to Val who looked like a deer caught in headlights. "I-uh. My weekend wasn't anything special and I'd prefer not to talk about it."

Thanks to her level of popularity dropping, nobody would take her side if she said Danny Phantom was the enemy, so she didn't even bother trying. And it's not like she could really tell them about her part-time job. Star had begun to talk to her again because she genuinely missed her, and she wasn't taking any chances on losing that friendship again.

A couple people groaned at her lack of enthusiasm. " , then." Lancer addressed to keep the line going.

This should be good. The boy knew horror, and he was a drama queen about every little thing. If he couldn't pull this off, there was something seriously wrong with this class.

"Okay, well. It was a pretty sunny day on Saturday. The birds were chirping, the ghosts were flying, the red hunter was zipping around like it was her job, which it was. But anyway, all was not well in the sleepy town of Amity Park." He paused, wiggling his fingers in the classic ghostly way. "While on my way to Danny's, I was almost hit by this reckless rock sticking out of the pavement. It came out of nowhere I swear! I swerved out of the way and fell hard, landing on my left side, and heard a crunching of bones. My heart sank. What could that have been?"

"I slowly sat up to inspect the damage. There was liquid all over the sidewalk. 'Oh no!' I shouted, sitting up and digging through my pocket, only to find my beloved crushed to death under my weight."

Oh. I know where this is going, Sam realized; having been told this story before.

"'MY BABY!' I screamed in horror at the sight! There were wires everywhere and pieces of broken harddrives and her circuit board was just totally smashed! I got up, holding her lifeless form in my arms, running the rest of the way to Danny's to better inspect the damage, but when I got there it was too late. My trusty PDA had passed away." He finished with a sniffle. "I still had three more payments on that one!" He all but shouted, clearly devastated by the destruction of his newest Assistant.

"Oh, and the rest of my Saturday was spent beating Danny's ass at Doomed until he kicked me out of his house for wiping his losses in his face."

Danny frowned, shaking a fist at Tucker. "Don't make me come over there."

"Or what, you'll beat me the same way you did in game?"

"No, I'll break your other PDAs."

Tucker mock screamed and clutched the PDA he held in his hands to his chest. "You're a monster!"

Sam couldn't help but laugh at the exchange before cutting in. "Excuse me, I whooped both your asses at Doomed, where's my credit?"

Tucker was speechless for some reason. She expected something about how she doesn't count because of her cheat codes or something, but nothing. Instead Lancer interrupted the exchange before giving any of them a chance to speak. Looking up from his booklight lit clipboard of extra credit scores for the day, he announced. "Thank you , now if you would please allow Ms. Manson to begin her story, that would be great."

Hmm… what would she talk about? Her weekend had been pretty fantastic, and she didn't really want to talk about her home life. She thought for a moment before picking a topic.

"Okay. This weekend was one of the worst weekends of my life. It all started Friday night, I was home alone, save for my Grandmother. Now, my parents weren't expected home until this Monday, so the two of us were completely and utterly alone." She paused to add tension. "While playing a simple game of cards, we heard something upstairs. It started off as a quiet scratching, then got louder, and we'd occasionally hear a bang and a curse." She gulped animatedly.

"Somebody was upstairs." The lightning took it's opportunity to strike at that moment, making the tale all that more chilling in the dark room. She had successfully drawn everyone's attention to her. "We didn't know what to do. The police would never make it on time if we called them, they never had to any of the other problems in this city. We were on our own in all senses of the word, and since my Grandmother can't walk, it was up to me to investigate." She began to breathe more heavily in between her pauses, as if she were panicking. "My Grandmother begged me not to go, out of worry. Who knows what was up there? It could've been a burglar, a killer, a ghost for all we knew. But we couldn't just sit there and do nothing. One of us had to investigate. No matter what, we were trapped. The moment they heard movement downstairs, we'd be done for anyway." She gulped. "So, I went to the liquor cabinet and pulled out the pistol we had tucked under there for safe keeping, my father had bought it in case of this very situation. I had never fired a real gun before. I was scared. My breathing became unstable as I silently inched up the steps. One by one. Into the danger that I didn't even know I could face. What if the gun didn't fire? What if I didn't have a chance to fire it? What if I missed? My head was spinning from so many worries and I felt hot from panic. I placed a hand on the doorknob and slowly turned it. Hearing the silent click from the door unlatching, I quietly pushed it in; hoping I wouldn't come face to face with the-" She got cut off by another student.

"Wait wait wait." The girl said, successfully ruining the mood that had gotten going. "This is a great story and all, but I can't concentrate."

Sam quirked an eyebrow at that, "And this is relevant because…?"

"What is all over your teeth?" She continued, making Sam furrow her eyebrows in confusion.

"What do you mean?" She rubbed a finger against her teeth and pulled away to check, revealing a faint glowing substance. Sam's eyebrows shot up.

Danny's text rang through her mind as she realized what he was trying to tell her.

"What is that?" Someone else asked. Either noticing for the first time, or finally working up the courage to ask.

"I-uh. Tried something different with one of my recipes the other day." She lied.

Tucker caught it. He grinned wildly and snickered a few times.

"Somebody had a fun weekend." He muttered with a Cheshire grin.

"Shut it Tucker." Sam whispered harshly back as the class resounded with murmurs and whispers.

"Do your recipes usually include sp-OW" He was cut off by a prompt kick to the shin under the desk.

"I said shut it." She threatened.

Apparently it wasn't something he could really pass up as the teasing continued despite the pain. "Oh come on, the evidence is literally painted all over your face! Danny's such an artist."

She kicked him again, going beat red. "You keep talking, and you're gonna lose that leg."

All attention was back on Sam.

"What?" She snapped. She hated being cornered like this. She was completely and utterly embarrassed and was thoroughly glad it was too dark for anyone to see how red her face had gotten.

Before anyone could speak, Tucker piped up again. "Please continue in gruesome detail, what ingredients this meal of yours contained."

She was gonna kill that boy.

Unfortunately, at his prompt a few of their classmates perked up, suddenly interested.

Her blush deepened and she swallowed. "Uh..well; I don't exactly…remember everything. I'd have to go home and get the recipe." She covered.

"Oh don't give me that. Surely you remember at least_ one_ ingredient." Damnit Tucker.

"I, uh…beans. It was a bean soup."

Tucker snorted again, before flat out laughing; clearly enjoying her complete embarrassment, before she kicked him in the skin even harder, startling him and making him hit his knee on the underside of the desk.

He frowned momentarily but it did not stop his muffled laughter.

"H-hope you didn't _choke_ on any-anything." He breathed out in huffs. This time when she kicked him, he groaned in pain.

By this point the rest of the class was beyond confused, and murmurs broke out everywhere. While Tucker's implications were certainly filthy, everyone knew that didn't glow.

Or did it?

One girl made the connection. "You didn't." She murmured before narrowing her eyes. "Is that what I think it is?"

Tucker and Sam froze at that. Tucker hadn't thought anybody would've made the connection, that it was just harmless fun.

But this was _Valerie_.

"I-it's actually a certain edible, glow-in-the-dark food coloring. Made from some weird online recipe." Please buy that, please buy that.

"With Phantom?" Was all she asked. Sam wanted to die.

The class went silent. A resounding "What?" echoing throughout the room.

'Not exactly.' She'd wanted to say, but she couldn't find her voice. She was frozen with embarrassment.

"What does Phantom have to do with any of this?" Tucker began for her, catching the question before things had gotten out of control.

"But that's-"

"Glow-in-the-Dark food coloring. You haven't used it before?" Sam continued smoothly, picking up on the lie.

"But what about-"

"What, I can't tease my best friend? It was an opportunity I couldn't pass up." He shrugged.

Valerie watched the two with growing suspicion, while the rest of the class bought the fib and continued chattering amongst themselves before Lancer felt the need to step in; irritated at how off topic the assignment had quickly gotten.

"Alright, settle down. Mr. Fenton, if you would-" He cut off, noticing the seat was empty. Tucker and Sam shared a look as Lancer continued in an annoyed tone. "Why am I not surprised," After skipping so much, it wasn't a shock to anyone that he would suddenly disappear in the middle of a blackout. He was lucky that Lancer was lenient on him, letting him make up certain assignments later or take tests he missed during lunch period or after school. At the very least, he wasn't missing anything important this time. "Nathan, do you mind retelling your weekend?"

The ginger nodded nervously and began to explain how he and Mikey spent the weekend at a card convention out of town. Halfway through the story, Danny snuck back into class, reappearing in his seat as everyone's attention was drawn to a flash of lighting followed by a loud thunderclap. Keeping his head down on the desk, nobody noticed he'd rejoined the class and if they had, they hadn't mentioned it.

"You alright?" Sam whispered to him as the next kid down the line was selected to speak, successfully drawing enough attention away from the trio to communicate.

The boy nodded and peeked around the room before turning his head to her from its place on the desk and replying just as quietly, "Yeah, it was just Technus."

"That why the generator didn't pick up?"

"Yeah, he completely fried the thing because of the storm. Apparently he got struck by lightning and the current hit the generator when he tried to possess it and that was the end of that."

Tucker looked at him funny, finally deciding to jump into the conversation. "But I thought you said it wasn't a ghost."

"He must've been out of range." Danny said with a shrug, picking himself off the desk and leaning back in his seat. "Eitherway, he's tucked away in the thermos, and we'll be out of power until they fix the generator." Switching gears he suddenly added, "So what all did I miss?"

Almost immediately after he asked, Tucker snickered. Sam turned to him with a scowl and kicked him in the shin again before he could open his mouth to speak. He just laid his face on the desk and snorted, out of pain or laughter, she wasn't sure.

"Nothing." She said a little too quickly, clearly dreading getting back on the topic. "Nothing much, uh, stuff…Stuff I'll tell you later." She continued; earning a confused look from Danny.

Upon noticing the look of confusion from his best friend, Tucker picked his head off the desk with that know-it-all smirk from before and added, "Oh, we just found out a little more of Sam's weekend than she'd wished to share."

Sam shot him another glare before turning back to Danny and repeating herself, "Like I said, I'll tell you later." Danny nodded, still confused. Sam had a lot of things she kept from the public, what exactly was it that got out this time? "Though it was mostly Tucker's fault there was even a problem." She finished, scrunching her face up in irritation, and making sure Tucker saw it.

Unfortunately, that only added fuel to the fire, "Hey, don't blame me for being curious." He whispered innocently.

"You weren't being curious, you knew damn well what was going on." She hissed back, to which he responded with a shrug.

"You shouldn't bring the evidence to school then." That stupid grin returned with a vengeance, this time directed at Danny, "Especially all over your face. Did you have _fun_, **Danny**?"

They were really lucky nobody ever paid attention to the three of them. For the most part, anyways. Anyone that was really interested in anything regarding their casual conversations besides Valerie weren't in the same English class with them; thank god, or there would be rumors spreading across the school already.

Danny's eyes grew wide when he finally realized what they were talking about and tried to suppress a blush as he casually rubbed the back of his neck. "Well, I uh…." He coughed, "Can we talk about this later?"

"Sure thing, but I gotta ask, was Sam hired just for this job or are you two finally dating?" Sam shot him another fierce glare, and he threw his hands up in surrender. "That's the last one, I swear!" He shouted a little louder than necessary as he tried to suppress a laugh, drawing a few stares from their classmates who were sorely disappointed at missing anything interesting in the conversation.

Sam sunk back in her seat and tried to focus on the story currently being told by Kwan, rubbing her face with her hands to get that entire topic out of her head. The last thing she needed was for the topic to suddenly return to her personal life.

Danny had put his head down again, likely to avoid any more teasing from his friend; and Tucker sat with his head on his hand, clearly bored at what little of Kwan's weekend he'd heard.

Soon it was Dash's turn, and being the last kid in the class to not have gone aside from Danny and Valerie who had both been skipped, and the incident had seemed to have been forgotten altogether, much to Sam's relief.

She heard Tucker give an uncharacteristic gasp from beside her and looked over to him. "So _that's_ why you were almost late this morning."

She stomped on his foot, twisting his toes into the floor.

"Shut up, Tuck."


End file.
